CHAPTER IV
FROM THE GREAT LAKES TO THE GULF
Pere Marquette was still in a convent in Rheims when a French wood-ranger
and fur trader was out in those western forests making friends for the
French, one Sieur Nicolas Perrot, who would doubtless have been forgotten
with many another of his craft if he had not been able-as few of them
were-to read and write. And Marquette was but on his way from France to
Canada when Sieur Perrot was ministering with beads and knives and
hatchets and weapons of iron to these stone-age men on the southern shore
of Superior, where the priest was later to minister with baptismal water
and mysterious emblems. It was Perrot, whom they would often have
worshipped as a god, who prepared the way for the altars of the priests
and the forts of the captains; for back of the priests there were coming
the brilliantly clad figures of the king's representatives. Once when
Perrot was receiving such adoration, he told the simple-minded worshippers
that he was "only a Frenchman, that the real Spirit who had made all, had
given the French the knowledge of iron and the ability to handle it as if
it were paste"; that out of "pity for His creatures He had permitted the
French nation to settle in their country.
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